The Many Lives We Lead: Transcendence Through Travel and Imagination

In every person’s core, there lies a nomad, an explorer, a seeker of worlds. The act of travel is a sort of pilgrimage into the lives we might have led. I just came from Hong Kong, with its neon arteries pulsating through the cityscape, allowing one to slip into a life electric with possibility.

The phenomenon of craving alternative lives is not simply a fanciful escape; it's rooted in a deep-seated drive for novelty and complexity. When we traverse unfamiliar lands, we do so to indulge in the fantasy of another existence, to stand at the precipice of 'what if.' Each alley and avenue whispers a different narrative, and in our minds, we author countless unwritten stories. “What if I got that job in Nikolaev, in 1990? Would I be under Russian rocket fire right now?” or “What if I was born in 19th century?”

Consider the profound allure of alternative reality movies and books. Their popularity is not just about entertainment; they cater to the human desire to transcend, to live beyond the confines of our singular existence. They are mirrors reflecting our multifaceted selves, the versions of us that exist in the ether of potentiality.

This transcendence is not a mere consequence; it is a catalyst. Our everyday reality, when perforated by the extraordinary, becomes a wellspring of inspiration. The sights of a street market in Kowloon, the scent of incense curling through temple halls, the tactile history etched into the stones of old Hong Kong – these are the tinder for the spark of creativity. Such experiences coax out ideas that might never have surfaced in the sedentary waters of routine.

The hunger to travel more is not useless. It stems from the knowledge that with each journey, our perspective broadens. The paradox of seeing something entirely different yet inherently similar fosters a universal empathy. We begin to understand the thread of humanity that binds us, even as we marvel at the mosaic of disparate cultures.

It’s this mingling of familiarity and discovery that feeds the soul. To stand on Victoria Peak and gaze upon the vast urban sprawl is to entertain the multitude of lives one could live, the paths one might walk. It is to live momentarily in a dimension of our own crafting, shaped by the vistas before us and the visions within us.

Travel, then, is more than movement through space; it is a journey through the selves we might have been, the selves we still could become. The act of imagining another life in another place is a silent rebellion against the singularity of existence. It is a testament to our nature as beings who not only yearn for but also derive vitality from the unknown.

One returns from travels with more than souvenirs and memories; one returns with the kindling for invention. The alternative lives we live in our minds may be ephemeral, but their impact on our creativity is indelible. And so, we continue to seek new horizons, to imagine, to transcend – for it is in these imagined lives that we find the freedom to truly create.

Editable memories

We often think of our memories as personal artifacts, treasures of the mind that belong solely to us. Yet, the emotional hues of these memories are far from permanent; they're like watercolors exposed to rain, susceptible to the elements of time and circumstance. The idea that we own our past, emotionally speaking, is a comforting illusion. Our memories are not fixed landmarks but shifting landscapes, continually reshaped by the winds of subsequent events.

We had a family vacation in Maui, a paradise where the ocean's embrace felt like the world's gentlest lullaby. The next day after we left, the disaster struck, and Maui was engulfed in flames. Those flames seemed to leap back in time, scorching the edges of that once-idyllic memory. Similarly, in 1981, Svetlana and I went on our honeymoon trip to the Ukrainian part of her extended family. A journey through cities and villages that felt like a part of our story, now feels like a voyage through ghosts. Lviv, Kyiv, Rivno – all these and other places we know and love have been damaged by Russian rockets.  The emotional texture of that experience has been irrevocably altered.

If our memories can be so easily rewritten, do we ever truly own them? Perhaps our past is not really ours but is shared with the ever-flowing river of time, which can erode the cliffs of our most cherished memories and deposit sediments of sorrow or bitterness.

Yet, there is a flip side to this emotional malleability. Just as memories can be tarnished, they can also be polished, enhanced by subsequent experiences that cast them in a new light. A strained relationship with a parent might find redemption in the wisdom of later years, adding layers of complexity and even gratitude to earlier memories of conflict.

In this sense, the fluidity of memory is not just a vulnerability; it is also a form of grace. It allows for the possibility of growth, of change, of new interpretations that can enrich our understanding of ourselves and our history. While we may not have complete ownership of our past, we do have a say in how we integrate it into our present and future.

And here lies the paradox: the same mechanism that allows our good memories to be tainted also grants us the ability to forget, to move past trauma, to dissolve our nightmares. The emotional component of memory is a double-edged sword; it can both wound and heal. It's as if our minds have built-in checks and balances, a way to ensure that while we may suffer, we also have the tools to recover, to rewrite our own stories in ways that allow us to continue, to endure.

A cool night in June

Just as life in Sacramento gets its rhythms from the seasons, so too does our appreciation of it. There's a profound connection between us and the city we live in that becomes evident on those few, fleeting cloudy summer evenings when the oppressive heat recedes.

When summer descends, it does so with an unwavering intensity. The sun radiates an unapologetic generosity, casting long, languid shadows under the cool canopy of valley oaks, cottonwoods, and sycamores. The merciless heat is our reality, our truth, our abnormal normality. It’s an intensity that demands respect, and with time, an uncomfortable adoration.

Then there are those precious evenings, a rarity indeed, when the skies over Sacramento cloud over and allow the relentless sun to take a breather. The city collectively exhales. The temperature dips, the air sweetens, and the world slows down. The austere facade of the city softens, revealing a more tender side. It's as if the city is saying, "Walk. Enjoy. Be slow."

The Central Valley’s nature has adapted to the sun's overzealous benevolence. It waits patiently through the long summer days, enduring, thriving, standing as testament to life's resilience. This dance between the sun and Sacramento's nature is a humbling spectacle. It's nature's way of instructing us: "Do not grumble. Do not wish away the heat. Allow the sun to complete its madly spinning journey. Your time, your perfect moment, is yet to come. Learn to wait."

This wisdom shared by our natural surroundings resonates with a deep-seated truth about life itself. Our lives, much like the cycle of the seasons, are not constant. They are a series of peaks and valleys, ebbs and flows. And while it may seem that the sun in our own lives shines too harshly at times, we must remember that the cloud-covered evenings will come. Sacramento's message is clear: Do not fret, do not rush. Let life unfold. There is a time and place that is perfect for you. Just learn to wait.

Weather and the human condition

The stormy, rainy days we've recently experienced have led me to contemplate how our planet's weather has shaped our evolution as a species. We learned to adapt to annual cycles, which are simply due to our planet's tilted axis. Furthermore, we developed resilience to the unpredictability of weather, knowing that any given day could be cold or warm, sunny or cloudy, calm or windy. One could easily imagine a different planet with no yearly patterns and a much more predictable weather system. Would such a planet cultivate a different kind of intelligence? However, it's our specific mix of predictable annual cycles and unpredictable daily variations that gave rise to our species. We mark our lives in years and take pleasure in being surprised by the shifting weather. Our civilization was largely shaped by our struggles to control these predictable and random changes. Our houses and clothes are just protective measures against adverse weather.

Perhaps the most profound consequence of our astronomical circumstances is this: we can predict with certainty the future weather for the next few months, but anything beyond a week or so remains unclear. For example, we know for sure that Sacramento will be hot by May, but no one can accurately predict the weather two weeks from now. Weather forecasts have slightly altered this situation, but not drastically. Our brains are pattern-seeking machines, yet they are consistently exposed to instances of pure randomness. The very need for free will may stem from weather unpredictability: when things are uncertain, we need to make decisions, which invariably involve assessing risks. It makes me wonder if intelligent life could exist on a planet without weather.

Weather teaches us to be adaptable, to change plans, and to always have a backup plan "in the event of inclement weather". The term "inclement" literally means "unmerciful". The unpredictability of atmospheric events planted a deep-seated belief in us that some divine force is behind a storm or a drought. However, it's more likely the other way around – weather has taught us that we can be unpredictable and random. The concept of free will likely mirrors the weather. We aspire to mirror the unpredictability of the skies. In many respects, we are merely reflections of our planet, despite our foolish belief in our own autonomy.

Cooler winds sweep through Central Valley

Every summer, the Valley restarts its probation period. ‘Can you withstand the heat?,’ - it asks, and then again – ‘Are you sure? How about some more?’ Sometime in September, it relents and sends one of it cooler winds, - not yet cool, just a little cooler. The trial is over, you may now go out in the afternoon, and no one will try to bake you alive.

Despite a plenty of warning, people keep trying to live here, and every Summer the Valley tries to scorch them, sometimes adding fire and smoke for variety. And yet, every September it relents, and rewards the patient with cooler winds.

To be fair, the reward lasts twice as long as the tribulation. The Valley is not unreasonable. It is just maddeningly obsessive in its cyclicity. It mocks our naïve understanding of hell and paradise: “How about both, every year? Four months of hell, eight of paradise?” Like a crazy parent, it keeps switching from bad days to good days, back to bad, and back to good again. We all know the game; it is nothing if not predictable. And yet never fail to feel grateful for the fist cooler winds of September.

December in the Central Valley

This land makes you wait for it: December, fall, my favorite
season. Stand under a big ginkgo tree, squinting at the autumnal yellow sun;
leaves will float down as hesitantly as snow in my hometown.

This land rewards patience with bright chilled air applied liberally to faces,
wiping off the long summer heat, breezing easy, pleased
with how things turned out in the end.

“How about these colors I just found” – it asks us.
We know, we’ve seen them before, from the same store.
And yet, yes, these are like new, like never seen before.

It is because fall smells excavate my subcortex,
Looking for memories of previous autumns’ smells,
of leaves, fallen because they are fallible, just like us,
of words, half-buried, half-dreamt.

Walking the dog in the dark

Pandora, Jem Radio, not NPR tonight: I had enough of talk, enough already. And Stitcher doesn't stitch. И врут календари. Let’s change the soundtrack of self-isolation. The tunes and throaty female voices shatter hard plates of thought into colored shapeless glass pieces, like in kaleidoscope’s guts, without its mirrors. No pattern to think of, none, just these random pieces. What a relief it is, not to be thinking.

Trees and bushes mark their territories with small fragrances; only one or two occasional show-offs give off heavy gorgeous perfume of their bloom. Mostly, these are fine smells of bark, mulch, grass, and leaves, subtly shifting every few steps. The dog is interested in something else, perhaps earth worms or moles. He seems to be is lost in his fantasy, chasing imaginary critters through the night. He attends to soundscape of his own, manages to get excited about what I hear as total silence. Dog walkers cross the street to avoid each other. No one says anything; what is there to say? Even a nod would not be visible.

The chill of night on my cheeks, why do I need you so much? Who knew, a child of the harsh land would crave the cold air on his face. It reminds him of something unnameable, like being alive and alert, and alone, cheek to cheek with unsympathetic darkness. I walk the dog, and life dog walks me yet again.

February in the Central Valley

To truly know the seasons, you need to be here for a few years. Each season has a place, between what came and went, and what is yet to come. Your body learns the rhythm, and shapes the experience.

Now is the closest to paradise we will get around here. The sun’s warmth is still a blessing and relief from the night’s cold; it is not yet the punishment of the “too much of a good thing” kind. My skin wants to prolong the in-between-ness.

The quality of light is odd. It is not the yellowish harsh light of the summer, nor is it a weak, low angled light of December. Rather, it is a milky white, hazy light set so soft against the still naked tree branches. Some more flamboyant trees bloom without care or shame. Others wait, collecting moisture inside their trunks and branches. The crazy orange trees bear fruit, on their own time, ignoring everything. The light loves all equally, for now.

It smells unlike spring smells elsewhere in the world. The local bartender concocts a rather subtle cocktail, with earthy, grassy, flowery and dusty base, and hits of smoke so faint it may be only a memory of the past. Every gulp will clear your mind, tell you a vague, unfinished story, and make you thankful – not sure to whom, not clear for what, but it will.

Gingko leaves

In California, fall comes gradually; as if unsure it is welcome. In New England or in Siberia, it invades the world quickly, uninvited, and cocky. But not here: plane trees will start rusting slowly and dutifully long before the first hints of cold. The grass never dies; to the contrary, it gets greener and thicker in the fall. Sequoias ignore the whole seasonality thing altogether. Some ducks leave while others hang out through the winter, if you could call it that. It is a mixed picture; only the sun comes up not as high, glancing sideways at us, changing the tint of every color slightly.

I take my clue from gingkoes. They are the masters of the autumnal arts. Their leaves will greet me with such an honest, naïve, and courageous yellow. Colors normally do not tell me much. Svetlana can see thousands of interacting shades, hear a whole symphony of colors. I barely get the tune; perhaps this is why gingkoes seems to be so loud to me. Their yellow is like trafficс light letting another fall into the city. A gingko leaf is shaped unlike any other leaf. It looks like a delicate insect, or a fairy. If you don’t see gingkoes in the fall, you are missing the season altogether.

Fall in the Central Valley

In these parts, autumn is timid and gradual. For me, it also hides within a distinct feeling of spring. In the Central Valley, summer is a harsh season to survive, with its stubborn heat, with not a drop of rain in four months. Fall brings relief of moisture and cooler days. In my northern instincts, relief connotes spring. My sense of seasons is confused, and yet delighted at its own confusion. One moment, a deciduous tree broadcasts nostalgia, evokes the memories of other, more drastic autumns elsewhere. I wonder if the tree is like me, a transplant. The next thing I see is a patch of outrageous green, happily radiating spring-like exuberance. It is just coming to life.

Both fall and spring are transitional; they call for rearrangements, for reshuffling of feelings, for switching mind’s gears. The light is different, the wind is different, the sounds take on another quality, the changing dawn and dusk creep on you. It is time for some habits and routines to be abandoned, for others to begin. I returned to writing a paper started a few weeks ago, and realize I don’t like it anymore. It will join the graveyard of abandoned projects hidden in my files under a self-deceptive folder “In progress.” It goes back decades; nothing ever comes back from it.

There is no progress in seasons, no linear time, no beginning and end. Instead, they are a set of endless cycles: sun goes up and down, up and down, up and down. Fall turns into winter, winter turns into spring, and on and on and on. The seasons make a mockery of human life, which has a distinct beginning, and an irreversible end. Someone has noticed the mockery millennia ago, and smiled back at the world. From then on, we keep smiling, counting days and summers, oddly pleased that they will go on after we end.

Seasonal, or The Ode to Teachers

Teachers get a little thrill just before the school year starts. No longer bound to agriculture, the teaching planet is still remarkably seasonal. Billions of years ago some random rock knocked Earth off its perfectly perpendicular axis, and here we are. Obliquity – I like the word; it implies a degree of imperfection, a flaw so fundamental it is not a flaw anymore. Equinox, solstice, the turning of leaves, the white Christmas – none of these would have existed if not for that unnamed rock.

California’s weather gave us little warning: well, it was a little cooler at the end of last week. In Siberia, the weather would still count as hot. The start of the school year is about imagining the new students, their lives, faces, idiosyncrasies and breakthroughs. It is thinking of new classes, new things to try. Seasons are all about repetition, yet human life is linear, and seasons are as much about difference as they are about sameness. Every birthday is the same and yet very different from the last one; the start of a school year is like that, except it is less personal and more communal.

One of the few good Soviet achievement was declaring September 1 (the universal first day of school in Russia) the national Day of Knowledge. The idea is credited to Fedor Bryukhovetsky, a famous school principal from Krasnodar. I collected data in his school when he was still alive, in about 1986 for my Russian dissertation. Here is a quote from my field notes:

“When I took over that school in February of 1943, in an almost completely destroyed city, there was nothing in it. Kids, parents and teachers began to bring whatever they could. We cooked ink out of elderberry... Kids were malnourished – skinny, with red eyes. The city gave us four hectares of dirt covered with thorny bushes. Teachers, kids and parents went there to uproot those bushes. Teachers and students both had bloody blisters on their palms. All the crops went to the Railroad Purveyance Department, and they had opened a cafeteria in our school. Every kid could buy a bowl of soup for four kopecks; this is how we fought malnutrition... As for relations between students and teachers, these were relations of a single impulse, of a single breath. Precisely there, on the fields of the supplementary farm, our community came to life... This very attitude towards shared work we always remembered, and tried to preserve in the future.”

Things are less dramatic now, but the essence of the profession is still the same: we connect our lives to our student lives in various ways. There is an invisible solidarity among all people on this oblique planet, who get a little thrill right about the start of the school year.

My mother's voice

I saw Mama in December, just four weeks before she died. She could not remember me, but kept saying that I look very familiar. Just in case, she decided to treat everyone she met as a potential family member. Perhaps this is how we all should try to live? She would ask everyone how they were doing, how are children, and offering tea. She told storied from her childhood, could name the village, the street where she grew up, names of her parents. She actually looked happy. When she spoke, the timbre of her voice woke up a small part of my brain. Something within me started to vibrate in unison with her voice. It always happens when I do not see her for a long time, and it always surprises me. Here I am, way over fifty, and I get the profound sense of bliss just from hearing my mother’s voice. Aren’t we supposed to grow out of it?

One of my memories is when I was about 5 or 6. My brother and I are at home, it is dusky and chilly. And then Mom walks into the door, we hear her voice. As we run to greet her, the apartment suddenly feels warm and light. I even remember wondering about this physical sensation at the time, “but it did not actually get lighter and warmer, did it?”

Bowlby, Harlow, and Ainsworth have created the theory of infant attachment. It is perhaps one of the most important patterns of all human sociability. Eli Sagan, unlike Freud, thought that mothers, not fathers, are responsible for the birth of morality. Morality is universal, because it draws on the same experience of being nurtured by a mother. Our mothers or their substitutes literally make humans out of us in the first few months of our lives. What happens to the attachment when we grow up, move away? I’d say, it is still there, somewhat hidden, buried under all the layers of adult lives. Her voice could bring it back, and that is what I am going to miss. 

Meeting God on Saturday

Svetlana and I have a new grandson, whom I am anxious to meet. With children, you never know what to expect. The fun is to catch an occasional glimpse of one of many genetic lines, in a shape of an ear, or in a behavioral trait. The profound pleasure is to watch a human life unfold; a pleasure only grandparents have full access to, while actual parents are too busy taking care of their kids.

Whatever our silly thoughts, the new person comes into the world, his very presence is a statement, a challenge, and a profound question. Children are our real masters, our jury and judges. Even if you do not have children, other people’s children rule the world. Do not get fooled by their apparent weakness. They are the genetic and cultural treasure of the species. Their power comes from the presence here and now, without pre-conceptions, as vigorous and as imposing as life itself. “I am here, what is the gift you are going to leave for me?” Under the X-ray of a child’s gaze, all accomplishments look small. The world looks very big.

Children are our best available cure for despair. If you ever wondered whether life makes sense, get a child, visit a child. You will get an answer, so strong and obvious that you will be wondering how stupid your question really was. Or, more likely, you will forget the entire doubting episode as if it never happened.

Look into a newborn’s eyes, if you want to meet God. I am going to, at the end of this week.

The California Autumnal

A slow autumn takes small bites out of the green rows of parade-cheering trees along the streets; lazily, absentmindedly, as if yet undecided. Sequoias and pines look decidedly determined to ignore the whole thing, wink. The deciduous brethren, nervous, shiver from the lightest wind. They know what is coming, alas, at last.

And so are people: some evergreen and seasoned, and some are more seasonal. The stoic ones keep their cool, while others melt under the angular autumnal light. We breathe in the smells of leaves, we savor the decay, as if this is the end of everything. We breathe out words, reduced to sounds dripping down like small leaves. Shallow mounds of yellow leaves are left forlorn, to shuffle through.

The memories of all past falls ooze out of my headache, those other, faster, more dramatic autumns in other places. The autumns form an amalgam of lights and languages, and leaves, and losses, smells, and little somethings too tiny to remember, but there nevertheless.

A non-eulogy for Dima

On Friday, my former colleague and friend Dmitry (Dima) Semenov died in a car crash in Thailand. He was 31, an accomplished scholar and leader, and one of the kindest and smartest people I know.

Eulogies mean to offer lessons from the person’s life, as if it was a story told to us. That is difficult; or rather, I am not good at it. People live their lives without trying to teach us anything. Instead, what I do is to remember one or two particular pictures about the person who passed away. They have no larger meaning and are not parables; those are simply symbols that indicate where other memories are stored. For example, my father’s symbol us when we walk together to get some milkshake in the neighborhood store; I am about five. Here is my grandfather teaching me how to split firewood. There is no way to reduce the entire person to one or two flashbacks, and yet having them helps.

I remember we were sitting down to eat at Yura’s and Tanya’s home in Sokolniki. I think it was their son’s Lenya’s birthday. Dima was his godfather, Svetlana is the godmother. It is sunny and very quiet. Dima smiles like Buddha, and says, “About this time on Sunday, it is exactly the right time to have a bit of vodka.” We all oblige, and that is my little token of Dima.

Why do we all feel the need to remember those who die? I am sure anthropologists have all kinds of theories about it. But we do, that is for sure. Death has a way of reminding us about itself. Mortality is a strange gift we received from the creator, according to Tolkien. It was his way of unbinding us from the physical world. Elves, more beautiful and immortal, did not receive it. Perhaps, but it is still a bloody terrifying gift. This is why we want to send the messages to those who cannot receive, as if to say, “you’re not all gone.”

Your nose is a time machine

As I walked on the river trail along the American River today, its smell took me back about 45 years or so. I am walking to fish with my brother and our grandfather. We enter the green strip of the Karasuk river, with our wooden fishing rods, and jar with grasshoppers, our bait. We also have a few earthworms, for another kind of fish. The river smells of wet grass, dirt, and water. Grandpa says: “If you take a bucket, won’t get any fish. If you don’t take a bucket, there will be a lot of fish to carry.” We have no fish bucket. The catch will be carried home on thin willow branches, going through fishes’ gills. I remember hundreds of details - how the hook is stuck in the rod to prevent the line from getting lose; that I have a jacket with pockets; how the river banks are, one tall and one low, how grasshopper chirp, etc., etc.

I wonder – what is the purpose of these memories? Why does human brain store all this useless information, and is able to recall it at a whiff, with all its entirety? Nothing is wasted in nature, so why so much memory space is committed to it? Of course, we do remember stuff that has significant emotional component – like everyone remembers where they were on 9-11. That is understandable – emotions are like computer tags for importance; they make protein bonds among neurons stronger. But I have not have a particular emotional high when we went to fish – it was something pleasant, but hardly critical. And yet I cannot remember what the University’s RTP policy says about the formation of primary evaluation committees, and what is the last name of the candidate we just interviewed. In fact, I still struggle to learn all my colleagues’ names.

Perhaps in childhood, the memory selection process is not yet developed, or it may work differently. This is why childhood memory have such significance for artists, film directors, and writers: they seem to be random, unexplainable, and excessive. They are needed to activate creativity – not because they are useful, but because they record the patterns of everyday life, like canvas is needed for a painting. I am thinking about people whose childhood memories triggered by smells, sounds, and word cues are painful, and ridden with anxieties. I have sine а that too, but overwhelmingly, my memories are rather pleasant. Isn’t this the main work of childhood – to build a stock of background memories that can be then used throughout life to paint more pictures on them? How’s that for an educational aim? Which standard is it going to be written in?

Сезонное

Некоторые березы уже паникуют, прячут первые желтые листья в совершенно еще зеленой траве. Как будто они и ни при чем, как будто еще ничего не случилось. И солнце как-то несколько обленилось и карабкается не так высоко, как раньше, и уже без энтузиазма. Из всех явлений естественного мира, только педагоги набирают обороты. Как бы против тренда, назло всему, включая прохладу ветра и мракобесие сильных. Они вылезают из норок, оглядываются, машут друг другу, берутся стайками за общий огромный Сизифов камень. Толкнут его немного вверх, он опять скатится назад. Те, кого научили, уходят, новые приходят – ничего не знают. Цивилизованность то вроде чуть подрастет, то опять откатится назад. Слишком долгая история для одного человека увидеть результат.

Но в этом есть ведь и особая, отчаянная прелесть. Учить – это как рисовать мелом на асфальте или палочкой на песке. Или следить за движением ледника. Бесполезность – это ведь на самом деле красота. Утилитарность противоположна эстетике, хотя дизайнеры и упорствуют в отрицании этого очевидного факта. Мы никого особо не меняем. Они приходят такими же, какими и пришли, ну может быть чуточку другими. И то неизвестно, надолго ли. Это ужасно, но согласитесь, есть в этом какой-то особый кайф. Наверное, только священники понимают – как можно слушать про одни и те же грехи, тысячи лет одно и то же, ничего не меняется. И в то же время делать попытку что-то изменить.

Это тост к вечеру первого сентября, а всем педагогам надо обязательно выпить. За дождь, который смывает наши рисунки с асфальта, за вечность, юность и забвение.

The dog days in Moscow

Russians don’t have the expression, but here they are in Moscow, most definitely. It is not just heat, which could be fought off with air conditioning, but also a particular slow species of summer light, the liquid quality of air that your lungs drink more than breath. I sense the unmistakable slow churn of little wheels in the brain, failing to get traction over the simplest of thoughts. My aspirations shrink to cold beer, or ice cream, or a lake somewhere nonexistent but still very far.

In the dog days, Wikipedia is the best read, just random articles about Jesuits, Finnish languages, microeconomics, Adderall, and the Hawthorne effect. Yes, where were we? - Aha, the dog days is apparently an astronomical expression, when the Big Dog constellation comes up. And yet I see a big dog panting, its tongue is the only cooling device. I can smell its wet fur. These are the dog days of summer.

The office folk are trying to work as honestly as they can. As so am I, so am I. The chapter for the book has increased 900 words today. How many of them will stay? – hard to tell. Maybe all of them will, maybe none. One thing is certain – there is no way to write all of those things planned for this summers. No, not a chance; mathematically impossible it is. Damned Russian government – why do you ban Adderall? That’s is the worst of your faults. I ain’t gonna vote for Vlad no more.

Лица, город

Никогда не устану смотреть на лица прохожих, или пассажиров в метро. Странная прихоть эволюции дала нам чудесный дар скорочтения лиц – десяток тысяч, бесконечного количества. Непостижимым образом мы мгновенно, как Google, анализируем множество деталей, а самое главное, соединяем их все в один устойчивый образ. Вначале, молниеносно, знаю я этого человека или нет? Потом, вдогонку, уже медленно и неохотно, приходит имя, принадлежность к какой-то группе или организации, прошлые разговоры. Вступает в работу обычная, вялая, страшно ржавая память. Только узнавание или неузнавание лиц приходит мгновенно и сразу целиком. Это чудесная быстрая память на лица, но только на них. В ней – роскошная огромная галерея уже знакомых, и мы лучше любого компьютера находим точное сходство с человеком напротив – даже спустя много лет, когда лицо изменилось, казалось, до неузнаваемости. Почему так неровно мы устроены? Где-то очень тонко и точно, а где-то Творец поленился, трудился тяп-ляп, как советский строитель в панельной квартире.

Та же самая связка от знакомого лица к истории, действует и с незнакомыми лицами, особенно если потренироваться. Незнакомое лицо провоцирует мозг на создание фантомной истории. Как будто не находя в себе нужной цепочки ассоциаций, ум начинает спонтанно генерировать истории о незнакомом человеке. Они бледной тенью возникают в сознании: воспоминания о несуществующем, или о возможном, из другого измерения. Наверное, именно это странное свойство ума используют писатели. Почему я не писатель? Ах да, тогда это работа, а так я просто иду по городу.

А бывает такое состояние, обычно вдалеке от дома, когда происходит много ложных узнаваний. На доли секунды вижу лица знакомых там, где их не может быть, в каком-то совершенно далеком городе, где шансы встретить знакомого ничтожны. Как будто бы ум испытывает голод по узнаванию, и компенсирует его за счет фейкового узнавания. Да и люди, как известно похожи друг на друга. Вот эта негритянка похожа на моего Сибирского профессора. Этот араб, наверное, родственник одного американского приятеля. Почти узнал, пошел чудесный процесс псевдо-узнавания.



Московское метро; вот сидит милая девушка, держит за руку взрослого мужчину с огромным, изрытым кратерами носом и умными черными глазами. Вот пожилая дама, все равно очень красивая, с красивыми морщинами, в хорошем платье и туфлях; она улыбается сама себе. На Маросейке лысый, одноногий мужчина просит денег, с украинским акцентом. Вот молодой монашек в рясе и с озабоченным лицом, быстро идет. Видите сколько сразу историй? Вся прелесть большого города именно в этом. Чествуешь себя как обжора, у которого никогда не переполняется живот, и можно есть, есть всякие вкусности.

Life as it should be

Last week we went to the Gorky park; it was a Saturday with the perfect early summer weather. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people were there: families with kids, young people, old people. In the recent years, the park has undergone a remarkable transformation. It used to be a seedy, kitschy, unsafe place. Now it is clean, well designed, free to enter, and full of these low-key entertainment things, like a giant sandbox, a contemporary art gallery, an open air dance deck (several couples were doing some great swing), a few nice restaurants, and a lot of green space to lounge around. An ice cream costs 60 rubles, about $1.70. Same for kvas. The heavens were contemplating rain in the evening, but mercifully reconsidered.

The scene got me thinking – what should life be like? Or rather, can it get any better? I mean – not life in general, but in this particular moment. We have developed seeking brains, always imagining something else, something better. Sometimes we look for it in the past, more often – in the future. In a very specific sense, we ignore the present as a candidate for perfection. We rarely look for the perfect right before our eyes, probably because our brains constantly move between the past as we construct it and future as we are trying to predict it. It is a peculiar blind spot that most of us have – except for some who work on their ability to see the present, usually within a religious or a meditative tradition. But even the very fact that people have to work on it especially proves the point that we normally do not see the in the present.

Anyway, for your future reference, life as it should be could be found in Gorky park on 31 of May 2014, the city of Moscow, Russian Federation. This may not be true, because I am sure someone there was unhappy, and the kids was not there with us. But it was darn close.